Last year the music company Concord borrowed nearly $1.8bn against songs that already exist and already earn. A promoter can now hand a new artist anything from a couple of hundred thousand dollars to $50m before a single tour date is booked. The first is priced on a track record. The second rests on one person staying well.

Frank Zuccarello is managing partner of Exceptional Risk Advisors, a New Jersey coverholder that writes life, disability and contingency cover for Lloyd's of London when ordinary insurers won't. His clients are performers, athletes and the people who lend to them. He explains how he prices a risk with no history: he insures the contract, so the policy pays as long as one person stays well. That is why a tour advance with no dates can be covered and a pandemic still can't. He also covers storm-postponed shows, ageing headliners and disgrace cover.

Guest: Frank Zuccarello, Managing Partner of Exceptional Risk Advisors.

Chapters

• 00:00 — Introduction
• 00:34 — How do you price a risk with no history?
• 01:50 — A young band, from $5,000 a month of cover to $250,000
• 02:43 — "Twenty percent of our premium and eighty percent of our headaches"
• 03:00 — Where ordinary disability cover runs out
• 04:15 — Excess and surplus lines, with Lloyd's behind the desk
• 04:33 — Binding authority and the Friday afternoon call
• 05:48 — One-day, one-season and one-tour policies
• 06:50 — "We're only going to make you whole"
• 08:35 — The one test, and whether it stretches to carried interest
• 09:28 — The tour advance with no dates
• 10:49 — Banks lending against a star's contract
• 11:06 — Catalogue loans versus advances
• 11:33 — One storm, two outcomes
• 12:24 — What a rescheduled show costs
• 12:54 — COVID, and why a pandemic still isn't covered
• 14:49 — Ageing headliners: more tickets, higher premiums
• 15:54 — Mental health and tour cancellations
• 16:57 — Disgrace cover: protecting the sponsor from the star
• 18:53 — "That might be a new product for us, Phil"
• 19:21 — $130m on any one person
• 19:53 — Ten or fifteen syndicates on a single policy
• 20:36 — A soft market, and reinsurers pulling back
• 21:46 — Sign-off

Links

• Exceptional Risk Advisors
• "Concord raises $1.8bn in music rights securitization," Alternatives Watch, July 2025
• "AC/DC show postponed as storm wreaks havoc on East Coast concerts," Ultimate Classic Rock, September 2026
• "Shawn Mendes cancels world tour to focus on his mental health," Digital Music News, July 2022

Follow the Fortunes covers the risk behind the return in sport and entertainment. Hosted by Phil Schmidt of Frontpool.

Sound by AleXZavesa and Dvir Silverstone from Pixabay

Views expressed by guests are their own. Nothing here is insurance, investment or legal advice.

Almost every insurance policy ever written pays out when something goes wrong. Game Point Capital writes policies that pay out when a team wins.

Will Hall and his brother Jack started it with no experience in insurance and nobody they knew in sport. Ten years on it's an MGA writing contractual bonus, coach buyout and NIL cover — and in 2024 it paid the University of Connecticut $2.77m after the men repeated as national champions and the women reached the Final Four. On how you price a bonus when there's no loss history to price it from, how you hedge a $54m coach buyout without handing the buyer the trigger, and why the cheapest place to lay off a sports risk right now might be a prediction market rather than a reinsurer.

Guest: Will Hall, co-founder and CEO of Game Point Capital.

Chapters

- 00:06 — Introduction

- 00:44 — Insurance that pays out when you win

- 01:37 — "You kick in when something goes right"

- 01:57 — A nine-billion-dollar market, and the liability nobody funds

- 02:32 — Two brothers, and a text message about Grigor Dimitrov

- 03:53 — "We were probably dumb"

- 04:19 — Lloyd's coverholder to MGA, and the friend from kindergarten

- 04:50 — Pricing a bonus with no loss triangle

- 05:40 — Why every quote has a shelf life

- 06:19 — UConn 2024: $5.6m of bonuses triggered, $2.77m paid

- 07:45 — $228m of buyout money in a single coaching carousel

- 09:12 — Hedging a buyout without creating a moral hazard

- 10:48 — Limits: "we haven't signed a hundred-million-dollar risk policy"

- 11:04 — NIL, the House settlement, and a $48.8m hard cap

- 12:08 — "You're gonna get sued again and again"

- 13:15 — Coaches are CEOs, paid the opposite way round

- 13:55 — Kalshi, and hedging at roughly half price

- 15:39 — Where the discount comes from, and where it doesn't

- 17:23 — Venue risk: the unresolved legal status of event contracts

- 18:19 — "You're rounding — it's like zero percent is hedged"

- 19:09 — The next Covid, and the wrong takeaway from the last one

- 20:27 — One per cent

Links

- Game Point Capital

- Kalshi / Game Point Capital partnership and pricing figures, February 2026

- "UConn insured basketball coach bonuses and saved nearly $3M," Stamford Advocate, April 2024

- 2025 coaching carousel buyout tracking, Yahoo Sports

- Protect College Sports Act of 2026, Senate Commerce section-by-section summary

Follow the Fortunes covers the risk behind the return in sport. Hosted by Phil Schmidt.

Views expressed by guests are their own. Nothing here is insurance, investment or legal advice.

RedBird Capital owns AC Milan, a Formula One team, and — through Fenway — Liverpool FC and the Boston Red Sox. It also owns a sports insurance business that doesn't cover any of this.

Bishop Street Underwriters has been buying into American amateur sport since 2023: nine operating companies now, $650m of premium last year, $800m targeted this year. Jim Arnold and George Wilson run its sports and entertainment division. On why you buy two competitors and use each to fix the other's weakness, what a founder-friendly sponsor does differently with a family business, and why flag football is now one of the more interesting underwriting problems in the market.

Guests: Jim Arnold, President of Sports & Entertainment (previously with Guy Carpenter and Markel) and George Wilson, SVP and Head of Distribution (previously with RT Specialty, AIG, and Great American) at Bishop Street Underwriters.

• 00:05 — Introduction
• 01:47 — "You must insure Messi and LeBron. Now tell us what you actually do."
• 03:01 — The size of the youth sports market
• 03:50 — Jim Arnold: law, claims, Markel, and why operations
• 05:13 — George Wilson: "I don't want to sell and I don't want to be involved in insurance"
• 07:06 — Bishop Street: nine operating companies in three years
• 08:22 — Why a panel of carriers rather than one balance sheet
• 09:13 — F.L. Dean, SportUnderwriters.com, SportsCanadaUnderwriters.com
• 10:17 — The mirror image: what each agency base asked for
• 12:15 — "We acquired literally John Dean"
• 12:50 — Why both brands survive
• 13:36 — What the RedBird and Weatherford connection delivers
• 15:26 — AI at the submission, not at the decision
• 16:27 — Emerging sports, and underwriting with no loss history
• 17:53 — The centralisation opportunity in governing bodies
• 18:32 — What private equity brings

• Bishop Street / White Mountains, $125m investment
• "Bishop Street plots next moves," Program Manager, June 2026
• RedBird / Weatherford launch Collegiate Athletic Solutions

Follow the Fortunes covers the risk behind the return in sport. Hosted by Phil Schmidt.

Views expressed by guests are their own. Nothing here is insurance, investment or legal advice.